later there’s a bump — is that con-nected?”And, he continues, it’s important toremember that not all activity will beneatly documented in a report.

“One of the byproducts DRTV people always get is — because they’re on
TV — they’re reaching a lot of people
who aren’t going to buy today, and
that’s a real big benefit to them. That
develops their next wave of purchasers
and the wave of purchasers after that.
But you can’t measure exactly how big
of an impact that had,” he says.

After a DRTV airing, Lee says, the
goal online is to generate
an increased amount of
conversions at a lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

“If the marketer ob-serves the conversion rateor AOV (average ordervalue) decreasing comparedto its baseline, then there ismost likely a disconnect be-tween the DRTV creativeand the website,” she adds.“This can be addressed bychecking that the market-ing message, offer, and creative assetsare consistent across the channels. Ad-ditional metrics such as time on site,bounce rate, and frequency should beEveryone has their own method ofusing proprietary and third-party datato achieve specific goals, and while theindustry recognizes the need for moreconsistent metrics from reliable andtrusted sources, there are varying opin-ions on which one will fill that need.

“Among probabilistic cross-devicesolutions, I would say the leader is likelyTapad,” says Koeppel. “In terms of thedeterministic approach, I would say Al-phonso is at the forefront.”Google Attributionis Lee’s top pick.

“The program is currently in betaand relies on AI to offer cross-channeland multi-platform attribution report-ing,” she says. “The system is able tocollect data from ad airings via broad-cast partners. TV attribution would re-quire their paid version, called GoogleAttribution 360.”Lee adds a note of caution: “Themost unreliable way to track the successof a campaign is to look at ‘last-click’attribution,” she says. “This is a widelyused digital practice where the lasttouchpoint or channel a consumer usesis given full credit for the sale or con-version. Unfortunately, this model failsto analyze the priorsteps that contrib-uted to the sale.By not trackingthe entire process,a marketer mayleave out impor-tant informationthat the consumerlearned duringtheir journey.”Hanley remainscautiously opti-mistic, erring onthe side of usingthe data as a toolrather than a con-clusion.“I don’t know ofone unified systemfor cross-platformattribution becauseso many companies measure differentparts of cross-platform marketing,” shesays. “For example, a company that isgreat at broadcast (video) cross-plat-form measurement is not normally in-cluding print and/or billboard exposurefor a total cross-platform unduplicatedreach. A company needs quality, broadcoverage across all media and scale totruly become the default. Until then,there’s lots of room in the proverbialmeasurement pot.”Google Attribution is one of the leading cross-device attribution technologies, though it is still inbeta. A paid version — Google Attribution 360— includes the linear TV platform, as well.TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT